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A Quieter Isle of Wight

IN late fall, many British seaside resort towns have a haunting charm. In the damp chill of early dusk, a festive air lingers in the scattered lights of a few year-round restaurants, the muted clamor of Star Wars games from an open arcade, the glimmer of Victorian lamps over a deserted boardwalk. Alluring signs -- ''Fudge and Salt Taffy,'' ''Postcards, Souvenirs, Maps'' -- still hang above closed shops. Shuttered and secluded, these towns have a hushed feeling, as if they were waiting for something to happen. In the lull between mellow autumn and the battering of winter storms, they offer a brief sense of suspended time.

Last fall, when my husband, James, and I were planning an early December trip to London, I decided that sense of suspension was just what we needed. I wanted a transition between the bright snow-covered Midwest and the dim gray-green light of London. But where, before plunging into pre-Christmas concerts and theater, could we spend a few quiet days close to London, yet far enough away to feel remote?

When I studied the map, I kept returning to the intriguing shape of the Isle of Wight, 23 miles wide and 13 miles long, off the southern coast. Brochures for the island, a summer holiday mecca, trumpeted regattas; Queen Victoria's country retreat, Osborne House; and tourist attractions like a fantasy park, steam railway, golf courses and zoo. Far from undiscovered, it was dotted with towns and villages.

When I read about the off-season Isle of Wight, however, it seemed a different kind of place -- no regattas, Osborne House often closed, holiday villages shut down. My Outdoor Leisure Map outlined vast stretches of beach, coastal walks and inland footpaths, and my tourist handbook promised, with only a little hedging, a semi-Mediterranean climate. After a two-hour drive from Gatwick and a half-hour ferry ride, we'd have all that sea waiting for us. We could arrive early Friday afternoon and leave for London Monday morning.

So the day after Thanksgiving, I found myself sipping a delicious cup of hot chocolate as I sat on the upper deck of a large, smoothly gliding car ferry. Jacket zipped tight against a brisk breeze, I watched Portsmouth's quayside slowly fade into the blurring mainland. Joined by two friends from London, James and I were off for a weekend on the Isle of Wight.

Almost immediately after landing, we spotted a sign for Quarr Abbey. Would this be an atmospheric medieval ruin? When we turned off the road and up a long drive, we discovered instead a striking Arts and Crafts church. It had been built between 1911 and 1912 and designed by a Benedictine monk, Dom Paul Bellot, who had been trained as an architect before he took his vows. Monks still sing Mass in Gregorian chant at services open to the public. We spent some time in its shadowy, peaceful interior, admiring the subtle brick ornamentation, before reluctantly returning to the more worldly concern of lunch.

Ryde, a busy little resort town on the north coast a few minutes' drive from Fishbourne, where the car ferry arrives, was already getting ready for Christmas. When we found a small hotel open for a late lunch, the four of us watched our waitress doing double duty as she hung lanterns and strings of colored lights around the cheerful room. Outside, just beyond an enclosed garden where a few roses and geraniums still bloomed, we could see the waves washing up on the sandy shore. Four hours after landing at Gatwick, we had already taken a short ocean voyage, visited an unusual church, lunched on spinach-ricotta cannelloni and strolled in a seaside garden. Raising our glasses, we toasted the Isle of Wight.

After settling into Little Orchard, a bed-and-breakfast outside the tiny village of St. Lawrence on the southeast coast, we made our plans. Walks, some exploration by car, and, unexpectedly, the theater -- for we had seen a notice in the window of the nearby village hall. The Pepperpot Players, a local dramatic society, would present a thriller-comedy by Simon Brett in the hall the following night. Tickets, under $5, would include refreshments.

On Saturday morning, we awoke to bright sunshine, and we only needed light jackets for our planned four-mile walk, neatly mapped out in an Ordnance Survey guidebook. We began on a grassy cliff near Ventnor, a coastal town near our inn called the ''Madeira of England'' because of its terraced streets carved into the steep hillsides. We then descended to a cove, where sun-flecked ocean spray dashed almost to the doors of several shuttered cottages.

Climbing again, we detoured into the 22-acre Ventnor Botanic Garden, still blooming with fuchsia, roses and enormous bushes of rosemary. This sheltered oasis is designed as a Victorian subtropical garden, with sections devoted to Australia, southern Africa, New Zealand and the Mediterranean, among other regions, and a medicinal garden containing plants used in folk remedies. With a long walk still ahead, we gave only a brief glance inside the conservatory. But we did take time for tea and scones and sat happily on outdoor benches in the sun.

Continuing up, we entered Paradise Walk. This path, slippery with wet leaves and fresh-smelling compost, took us back into the shadow of overhanging trees. Thickly wooded with shrubs and ferns as well as trees, Paradise Walk felt like a quarter-mile slice of jungle. Above us was part of the Undercliff, one of the island's most remarkable geological features, a seven-mile natural terrace formed by a slippage of chalk and limestone. Eventually we emerged onto High Downs. Walking along the edge of Rew Down, a nature reserve, we could see past green pastures, sheep and housetops to the glinting sea far below. Winter seemed wonderfully far away.

After lunch -- fresh local crab at a pub where our windows looked out on surf a few yards away -- we drove across the island, meandering on country lanes, to Carisbrooke Castle, with an imposing medieval gatehouse, massive stone ramparts and a deep moat. Charles I was briefly imprisoned in the castle, before his eventual beheading in 1649, but the fortress seemed almost cheerful in the balmy afternoon sun. At the Wight Mouse Inn, where we stopped for an early supper before our play, we craned our necks to admire the gaudily eccentric ceiling, hung with all kinds of old instruments, from violins to accordions, which were decked with tinsel and Christmas ribbons.

Our night at the theater was a highlight of the weekend, a village event packed with local people, who pulled out extra chairs for the four of us. The small rectangular space made a surprisingly effective playhouse. At intermission, after we had our tea, one lady passed trays of cookies down each row, and another conducted a lively raffle (at about 16 cents a ticket) with prizes that included a bottle of wine and a box of Christmas sparklers. Even the play was charming, its plot creaky but its actors confident and well-rehearsed. At the end, several members of the audience stopped to tell us how pleased they were that we had come.

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On Sunday morning, we circled half the Isle of Wight, driving south and then northwest along a stunning coastline toward the Needles and Alum Bay. Judging from the size of restaurants and gift shops, summer tourists flock to see the bay and its Needles, three dramatic white-chalk outcrops jutting from the water. The bay, named for the alum that was once extracted here, is famous for its strata of sandstone in white, black and soft shades of green, red, yellow and brown. The sands are sold in various souvenir forms. But on this gray, chilly day, the chairlift down to the beach wasn't working, only one gift shop was open and we walked by ourselves to the lighthouse that guards the bay for views of the spectacular cliffs.

In late morning, we still had time to stop at Tennyson Down, named for the poet, less than two miles from the Needles. In Farringford, his house at the foot of the down, Tennyson wrote some of his best-known poetry, including ''Idylls of the King.'' On the down, which is marked by a monument where Tennyson used to take his daily exercise, we joined a handful of well-wrapped walkers and their dogs, who were braving a sharp wind with equanimity. (Tennyson said that the air here was ''worth sixpence a pint,'' then an honorable sum.) But a very short, cold walk was enough to drive us back to the car in search of a classic English Sunday lunch: roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and sherry trifle at the Folly Inn, still another waterside pub, down a winding road next to a marina. It was almost cold enough outside (and cozy enough inside) to think of Christmas.

After lunch we wandered around the island, passing through several quiet towns and yet more country lanes among fields and pastures. As dusk began to fall, we paused at Shanklin, just up the eastern coast from our inn, for one last seaside walk. Except for one amusement pavilion, everything on the beachfront was closed. Only a few lampposts and the pavilion's blinking lights cast slanting gleams onto the wet sand. As we walked, the beach seemed to stretch for miles in the freshening dark. The tide slid toward us with a slight rushing murmur, and I shivered a little in the chilly night air.

When I packed that night, ready for the ferry and the drive to London in the morning, I was thinking of the deserted beach, a few glimmering lights and the sound of water. I still felt jet lag, but I was somehow ready for a deeper shift of time. The Isle of Wight had gently turned me toward the proper season.

Where both Tennyson and Queen Victoria felt at home

Transportation

Frequent car ferries leave from Portsmouth, Southampton and Lymington for the Isle of Wight. The crossings from Portsmouth (to Fishbourne) and Lymington (to Yarmouth) take about half an hour. Off-season fares for a car and the driver are $73 to $94 round trip (at $1.67 to a pound), depending on length of stay. A 15-minute passenger catamaran connects Portsmouth with Ryde; round-trip adult fares are $9.40 to $18.60, depending on length of stay, and half fare for children. Passenger ferries also run from Southsea to Ryde and from Southampton to Cowes. Reservations advised; for the car ferry from Portsmouth, call 0990 827744 in Britain or (44-1705) 812011 from overseas, fax (44-1705) 855-257, or write Wightlink Isle of Wight Ferries, Post Office Box 59, Portsmouth PO1 2XB, England. On the island, trains and buses provide a network of routes. For information, contact Isle of Wight Tourism, Westridge Center, Brading Road, Ryde, Isle of Wight PO33 1QS, England; (44-1983) 862942, fax 823033.

Rooms and Food

Isle of Wight Tourism can supply a list of hotels, guesthouses, inns and furnished cottages. Our crisply run bed-and-breakfast inn, Little Orchard, Undercliff Drive, St. Lawrence, (44-1983) 731106, cost about $62 for a double room with private bath and full English breakfast.

The Wight Mouse Inn and Clarendon Hotel, Chale, offers winter rates between November and February (excluding holidays), with doubles at about $94 in the off season. The inn is noted for its 365 malt whiskies. Telephone and fax (44-1983) 730431.

The National Trust rents furnished cottages, by the week or for as few as two nights (if booked no more than two weeks ahead). Two-night rentals begin at about $120 in off season. Call (44-1225) 791199.

Pubs, restaurants and cafes abound. The Folly Inn, Folly Road, Whippingham, a large and popular pub restaurant on a river, serves a prawn sandwich with French fries ($6.30) and homemade steak and kidney pie ($9.80). (44-1983) 297-171.